Haven't watched your clips yet, elfismiles; I will, but... no, I don't think he backed away from Timewave Zero, per se, though he always said he was open to it being wrong, and if anyone could disprove it he was all ears. Honestly, I don't really get the whole thing; I have trouble wrapping my brain around it. I did watch this youtube vid claiming to disprove Timewave Zero:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ng7hG11ekMIf anyone has it in them to do an idiot-proof breakdown of the whole debate I'd be all ears. My personal instinct, with my limited understanding, is actually against TZ.
I do intuit that he was onto *something* with it, though. In his near-desperate attempt to bring the unspeakable meaning of hyperspace to the world he came up with TZ. Perhaps it was a fool's endeavor. His brother, Dennis, thinks it was, thinks that Terence and the whole premise of "The Invisible Landscape" (in which he outlines TZ) is wrong at its core. They were a hell of a yin-yang pair, Terence being the quixotic philosopher and Dennis the quintessential scientist. I think that for all his self-admitted faults Terence was a path-setter like absolutely no one else in history, and it was because he followed the wildest dreams of the psilocybin and DMT experience and believed in what he was seeing, even if he couldn't wrap a rational mind around it; he brought it to the public anyway. In doing so he invoked notions of extraterrestrials and "machine elves," and he was criticized by friends for that, but all he was doing was trying to name the unnameable; it wasn't exactly literal. Furthermore, he never said with certainty that psychedelic mushrooms were from outer space, but he mentioned it as a theory, and noted that this was something that the mushroom told him verbally in a conversation he had with it. This is imo the most fascinating aspect of what TM experienced was the actual English-language communicative relationship that he developed with the mushroom later in his life. I don't doubt it for a second.
If I fault him much for anything it would be for emphasizing Timewave Zero too much- if you're wrong, even if you say you might be, it makes you look bad. I think it was born at least partially out of a desire to produce *something* grand for the world, some sort of master thesis... when one may not be called for. I also think Terence was a little politically naive at times, though if he were alive today post 9/11 that could have changed.
On the other hand the thing I like most about him was his continued emphasis on encouraging other people to explore hyperspace dimensions and not take his word for anything. "No one is smarter than you are!" However awkwardly worded, I think what he was getting at is right on. Dive into hyperspace, think 100% for yourself, don't worry about giving your experience context or listening to what other people are saying about it- what do YOU see?
Re the cell phone cancer theory- I'm a little lost... now everyone uses cell phones constantly, and we're not all dropping dead of cancer in our early 50's (more like our early 80's). Do you think early cell phones were more carcinogenic for some reason?
by wordspeak2 » Sun Jan 01, 2012 9:33 am 
